MSI Press Blog

  Authors frequently confuse LIST and NET and, in this way, end up with contracts that pay lower royalties when they believe that they are getting a good deal. Often, they cannot negotiate in ways that benefit themselves because they do not understand this difference and its significance. Let's break this down. List refers to the retail price of the book. Payment on list means a percentage of the retail price of the book. If royalties are 8% of list (5-8% is typical), then on a $10 book, royalties would be 80 cents; if they are 10%, royalties are $1, on every book sold. Easy to calculate, easy to predict income, and always standardized, no surprises or overestimations. Net refers to what is leftover after expenses. Gross revenue gets adjusted by a number of expenses: printing costs, printer set-up fees, shipping costs, handling fees, distributor percentage of sales (typically, 40%-55% per book), distributors' initial and continuing catalogue listing costs (without which online ...

  Every traditionally published author eventually opens a royalty statement, sees the numbers, and feels that familiar jolt of disappointment. This is all I earned? After everything I did? Traditional publishing can make authors feel powerless, especially because the reporting is opaque. But you’re not without options. You can’t change the contract, but you can influence the ecosystem around it. Here’s what you can do when your royalties don’t match your expectations. 1. First: Understand What Your Publisher Can and Cannot See This is the part most authors never hear clearly: Publishers who distribute through Ingram cannot see: Sales by retailer Sales by channel Sales by region Amazon‑specific data Library‑specific data Indie bookstore breakdowns Ingram provides only total units sold per ISBN per period. That’s it. No granularity. So when authors ask, “How many copies sold on Amazon?” the publisher literally does not know. What publishers can see: Total units sold (all r...

  When a $3.34 Deposit Means More Than It Looks Most authors have received a royalty statement that made them laugh — not because it was large, but because it was tiny. A few dollars. A few cents. A number so small it feels almost absurd. But those tiny deposits are messages in a bottle. They say: Someone found your book. Someone cared enough to buy it. Someone spent time with your words. In an industry obsessed with launches, lists, and metrics, it’s easy to forget that books live slow, wandering lives. They travel through time. They find readers long after we’ve stopped tracking them. And sometimes they send back a little signal, a quiet acknowledgment that the work still matters to someone. A $3.34 royalty isn’t a paycheck. It’s a whisper: I reached someone. And for many authors, that whisper is worth more than the number on the statement.T hese Tuesday talks reflect real discussions between the management of MSI Press LLC and our own authors or those would-be authors ...